Oct. 22is date night. Finally, Luxembourg Central Bank governor Yves Mersch will get to sit down with the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) for an intimate soirée in Strasbourg. It won’t be all hearts and flowers though. The meeting is the latest step in a saga of gender-based internecine strife among the European institutions and the atmosphere will likely be tense.

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ECB fans will know the parliament has been delaying Mr. Mersch’s appointment due to long-standing demands for a more gender-balanced governing council at the central bank. It’s currently 22 men – with no change in sight. But although they have now agreed on a date for the hearing, the drama has shifted to the committee itself–and there could yet be hiccups on the way to mustachioed Mr. Mersch’s appointment.

Legally speaking, the parliament just has to be consulted. A negative opinion wouldn’t stop Mr. Mersch’s appointment, but it would put the council in an awkward position if it went ahead anyway. But who says there’s going to be a negative opinion? The committee will decide on what Mr. Mersch says on the day, right? Non.

“A negative recommendation would be adopted, based on the failure by the Council to respect the demands … aiming at respecting a wider diversity of origins (notably the gender balance),” French MEP Sylvie Goulard said in a statement. “No judgment would be made on the competences of the candidate.”

Not all her colleagues are thrilled about this, and there’s no guarantee it will play out this way.

Real Time Brussels spoke to Jean-Paul Gauzès, who said she had “no right to send this communication at a time when there are so many difficulties,” and that while the gender issue is a serious one, it’s also essential to get the ECB executive board back up to full manpower. (It currently consists of five, not six, representatives.)

“I absolutely agree with the argument, but you can’t just leave things hanging for months and months,” the French MEP said on the phone from Paris, adding he’d encourage his center-right European People’s Party group to abstain when it comes to the vote, rather than give a negative opinion. Moreover, Mr. Gauzès added that the decision to cancel Mr. Mersch’s original hearing two days before it was due “wasn’t very courteous.”

The desire to get a roadmap, or other similar commitment from the EU council, to tackle gender balance is growing. German Green MEP Sven Giegold told Die Welt the hearing is “the next step in ratcheting up” the issue and that he’d push a no-vote as well.

In a final twist this week, Ms. Bowles said she’d decided to “practice what I preach,” and applied to be governor of the Bank of England. While she’s a long shot, it’s a development in the saga akin to a ‘Days of our Lives’ character leaving for the ‘Bold and the Beautiful.’ Who will keep the chatty members of the ECON committee in check if Sharon goes to the Square Mile?

For now, though, the big question is whether the parliament will further frost over its relations with the ECB by expressing its displeasure on Oct.22 – or whether the council will set out some concrete steps to get women into top monetary policy jobs first.

“I don’t think anything that has transpired has removed the parliament’s determination to have the gender issue [tackled],” Ms. Bowles said, adding that the European Council “should do the decent thing rather than be dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way,” on gender balance issues.

About Real Time Brussels

The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels blog is produced by the Brussels bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The bureau has been headed since 2009 by Stephen Fidler, who was previously a correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters. Also posting regularly: Matthew Dalton, Viktoria Dendrinou, Tom Fairless, Naftali Bendavid, Laurence Norman, Gabriele Steinhauser and Valentina Pop.